Callejón solitario
2019 · 12m · España
Directed by Jose Maria Tros de ilarduya
Genres: crime, drama, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A beggar waits in a desolate alley remembering his vanished family. He is the victim of an unscrupulous man who will receive his punishment through revenge.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent but predictable—revenge-through-suffering is the oldest moral geometry in cinema, and Tros de Ilarduya doesn't twist it enough to justify another lap around the block.
The film's restraint and compositional patience—holding us in the beggar's desolate space, letting memory and anticipation accumulate through formal control—situate it squarely in the lineage of contemplative European noir; this is craft aware of what precedes it.
The structural choice to anchor the entire narrative in the beggar's waiting—making absence and memory the primary action rather than the revenge itself—is what elevates a familiar premise into something with real psychological texture.